A senior executive at UK Sport may be summoned to reappear before a parliamentary committee following concerns from MPs that she gave misleading evidence about Britain's medal target for the 2012 Olympics.

Liz Nicholl, director of performance at the body that advises the government on elite sport, told the committee UK Sport had not set a target for the London games. But MPs on the committee believe this was contradicted by UK Sport's funding submission, accidentally leaked on Tuesday to the shadow sports minister, which stated the ultimate target was to reach fourth in the medal table.

Edward Leigh, Conservative chairman of the influential Commons public accounts committee, decided last night to write to UK Sport asking for an explanation of the apparent discrepancy. If the committee is not satisfied, Nicholl will be summoned to appear before the committee again.

Nicholl had repeatedly clashed with the Conservative MP Greg Clark during a heated session of the committee last week, in which he asked 10 questions about the medals target for 2012. Clark asked: "What is the medals target for London? Have we set that yet? Nicholl replied: "We have actually looked at the plans for London and we have acknowledged that a home games is an opportunity to do the very best."

Clark repeated his question: "What is the target? Nicholl replied: "We are unable to set a target at this point."

The apparently fruitless line of questioning continued, with an exasperated Clark commenting: "We seem to be having a lot of words here to answer very simple questions." Nicholl acknowledged UK Sport "aspire to be" in the top five, but added: "The target for 2012 has not yet been set and cannot be set until we know the resources that we have available."

Clark said yesterday that this clearly contrasted with UK Sport's funding submission, which stated in bold type: "The ultimate Olympic target for 2012 is to reach fourth in the medal table and finish as the top nation in Europe. We have determined that this will require 120 medallists to win at least 60 medals, including 17 golds."

UK Sport said it would be happy to respond to the committee and stood by Nicholl's evidence. A spokesman said: "Our investment model enables us to consider a range of targets for 2012, including what we describe as the ultimate target of fourth in the medal table - but it makes it very clear that such a target, while our preference, is entirely resource dependent."